


De Perdre une Rose

by Frankielovesballet



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: AU, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-27
Updated: 2013-07-27
Packaged: 2017-12-21 13:34:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/900880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frankielovesballet/pseuds/Frankielovesballet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Even now, three decades after it all happened, I still think of that cab ride after the hospital. I don’t have any memory of talking to a doctor or looking at scans or sitting in the waiting room. I don’t even remember getting into the cab. These things happened, they must have and I know that. But all of it was swept aside by the road back to 221B Baker Street, and that terrible leaden silence that threatened to crush me, stop my breathing, squeeze the life from me<br/>*       *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *      *<br/>Sherlock is diagnosed with lung cancer, leaving John to clean up the mess</p>
            </blockquote>





	De Perdre une Rose

**And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me… You will always be my friend. You will want to laugh with me. And you will sometimes open your window, so, for that pleasure… It will be as if, in place of the stars, I had given you a great number of little bells that knew how to laugh”**  
 **The Little Prince**

Even now, three decades after it all happened, I still think of that cab ride after the hospital. I don’t have any memory of talking to a doctor or looking at scans or sitting in the waiting room. I don’t even remember getting into the cab. These things happened, they must have and I know that. But all of it was swept aside by the road back to 221B Baker Street, and that terrible leaden silence that threatened to crush me, stop my breathing, squeeze the life from my heart. It was so quite that I could hear his brain digesting the information, masticating it in small, easy to handle bites. That was what he did with everything. But not me, it hit me like a piano from the second story. Bam.

 _Eighteen months without treatment, stage three, aggressive, six rounds of chemotherapy, surgery_  
  
All of it, spinning around on the tireless carousel of my mind. Around, around, around.

The first round of chemo started that weekend. It wasn't until I took out the electric razor to shave off his raven locks did my world shatter. I distinctly remember placing the razor back in it’s bag and collapsing on the floor. I couldn't breath or hear or see or think. I stayed like that for a long time, until he found me and pulled me up and led me to the couch. He gave me a pillow and let me scream into that for a while before making tea.

Then he got the razor, plugged it in, turned it on and handed it to me. I sobbed like a baby, cutting short all those curls, watched as they fell to the ground. I was swimming in a sea of black by the time it was done, his freshly cut hair prickly under my hands. All day, he kept reaching up to run fingers through curls that weren't there.

That night he broke down, finally accepting this was a crime he could not solve. He was at the dinning table, doing some sort of experiment when he went to run his hand through hair that was just a memory. "God dammit! Why?!" He swept his arm across the glass vials and tubes covering the table and slammed his fists on the wood. I was beside him in an instant. He fell into me, his head resting on my shoulder, utterly defeated and shaking with sobs. Why? Over and over he asked it and over and over I gave no answer.

On Friday, I went with him to the oncologist to figure out a treatment plan. One week on, one week off. Twelve weeks all together. On Saturday I was there when his port was inserted and on Sunday morning I was there, standing next to his chemo chair, while the first dose of poison coursed through his veins. And on Sunday afternoon, I held the bowl as he threw up for the third time.

Oddly, I don’t remember much of the first week of treatment. In its place is a never ending cycle of needles and poison and nurses and sick and pain and sleepless nights. By the end of that first round, all of his hair had fallen out and his head was smooth as an egg. His eyelashes and eye-brows fell out also, making his face oddly empty.

Then, we had a week. To recover, catch up on sleep, try to eat, avoid sick people. At the end of the second course, his cheeks were hollow and his eye’s sunken in. The chemo had destroyed his white blood cells and he wore a surgical mask in public places. The amount of medication I got every week at the pharmacy was alarming. Mountains of boxes and bottles. Pain killers, anti-depressants, anti-nauseas, sleeping pills, blood-thinners, steroids. Five pills in the morning, ten in the evening.

I took most days off from the surgery, staying home to fetch bowls, water and twice, an ambulance. He went in for IV nutrients three times a week and fluids everyday. The treatment was intense but gave results. Halfway through and the tumor in his lung had shrunk by half. Fantastic, a miracle. That’s what the oncologist called it. I called it hell. He was too weak to call it anything.

The last PET Scan, four days after the final day in the chemo chair, said the growth was small enough to operate on. We waited a week to make sure he was strong enough for surgery and seven days later he was wheeled into the theater. They cut out all that remained of the cancer, leaving his lung weak and battered. Yet more medicine was added to the masses to stop his body becoming infected while I brought him edible food, movies and new crimes to solve and he built up his strength again, lying in that hospital bed.

The birth of my son is the only time I was ever as happy as when I wheeled him out of the hospital for the last time. By then, he head was covered in post-chemo fuzz and he looked less like a famine victim than he had in the three and a half months since being diagnosed. When we got home he turned to me with a true smile, as radiant as the sun, and said “It’s over!" Even though it was far from over, (there would be physio for his breathing and scans and follow-ups and endless other things) for this moment I let myself believe that it was. I laughed for the first time in months, “We made it! YOU made it!" I made a celebratory meal of pasta and pesto and for once, he kept it down.

Life was almost normal for the next few months. His hair grew back, straight now, not curly and his mind was as brilliant as ever. On bad days he walked with a cane and had trouble climbing stairs but he always had a snarky response ready and was quick to correct people.

I came back from the shop one day, six months after diagnosis, to find him convulsing on the floor.

I can still see the look on the doctor’s face when he told us

_Brain metastases, right cerebral hemisphere, three large lesions, five months with treatment, palliative care, too deep, inoperable, whole brain radiation_

We met with his old oncologist and arranged more treatment. We went home, I shaved his head again. Three days later, he had his first radiation session. It was painful, his scalp peeling from radiation burns. He threw up, constantly. Because of the placement of the lesions, his depth-perception went straight away. He walked into walls and tripped over curbs. He couldn't play his violin, he was put on stronger anti-depressants. They gave him corticosteroids to stop swelling in his brain and anticonvulsants to avoid any more fits.

The results of the MRI, two weeks into treatment, showed very little progress. Living was becoming torture and he didn't want to do it anymore. He asked to stop radiotherapy, so we did. One month was what we were told and one month was what we got.

Eventually, he lost all motor-control of his left arm and leg. We named his wheel-chair Moriarity and his oxygen tank Phillip. His hair never really grew back, only in grey fuzzy patches, so he kept his head shaved. On his last day, I remember noticing how weak he was. Sensing that the end was near, I decided we would go for a walk. I took him to the park near the house and we got ice creams and fed birds with some stale bread. He looked so happy, face puffy from steroids, watching the birds flap around and fight for the crumbling loaf.

That evening he had a stroke and I would like to think the last thing he saw was me, bringing him his tea. He died with a smile on his face.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Thank you so much for reading it all the way through! I wrote this one day, on the spur of the moment. It's inspired by the heartbreaking 'Alone on the Water' a Sherlock classic
> 
> 2\. Most of this is based on real events. My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was seven and brain mets a few months after treatment. HAPPY THOUGHTS SHE'S STILL ALIVE :D
> 
> 3\. Sorry for any medical inaccuracies! I tried my best but alas, I am no doctor. Just a 15 year old.....
> 
> 4\. The quote at the beginning is from 'The Little Prince' by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry


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